Robert Lanza appears to be a legitimate and accomplished physician and stem cell researcher. Unfortunately he has decided to follow in the footsteps of Linus Pauling in venturing outside his area of expertise into the world of pseudoscience.

Here is the abridged version of his arguments, which he lays out in his 2009 book. I found nothing new in Lanza’s ideas – he simply brings together now tired and long discredited distortions of physics and mystery mongering on the edge of scientific knowledge.

Before I delve into some of his specific arguments (which will take a part II) I must point out that nowhere in his description of biocentrism is an actual scientific theory. He does not posit anything that results in testable predictions. Rather, he seeks only to “explain” life, the universe, and everything, as if explaining is science.

Similar to Chopra he builds his case on a number of arguments, all of which are either wrong or simply do not add up to his preferred explanation of biocentrism. They are:

– Scientists do not understand where the universe came from, and the Big Bang does not cover it.
– Quantum mechanics demonstrates that the universe only exists when being observed by a consciousness
– Scientists do not understand consciousness
– The laws of the universe are fine-tuned to allow life to exist, and scientists don’t understand why.
– Space and time are mysterious

Lanza seeks to explain all these mysteries by making a huge and unwarranted leap – that consciousness creates reality. He seems to think that because he can explain all these mysterious phenomena, that in any way lends weight to his ideas. However, he is simply substituting a deeper mystery – where did consciousness come from, what is consciousness, and how, exactly, does it create reality if reality is not out there?

Lanza is essentially making a “biocentrism of the gaps” argument. He might as well conclude that “goddidit” – that also would “explain” everything without actually presenting a testable hypothesis. One can invent an infinite number of such “explanations.” I think a giant pink turtle created everything. The GPT, as I like to call it, always existed and has whatever qualities are necessary to explain life, the universe, and everything. There, done.

Where did the universe come from?

I don’t know. This is without a doubt a scientific mystery. The Big Bang is not even an attempt to explain where the universe came from – it simply describes an event at the beginning of this universe. Whether or not the Big Bang emerged from “nothing” and exactly what “nothing” is, is an interesting question. If you are interested, I suggest A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.

It is remarkable, however, that the “god-of-the-gaps” gurus who are trying to promote their own theory of everything by pointing to what is currently unexplained by science have to go all the way to the origin of the universe. I think that says something about where we are scientifically. And give us time – science will likely illuminate such cosmological questions over time.

Lanza here is making a classic logical fallacy of the pseudoscientist – confusing currently unexplained with unexplainable. Just because we have not yet fully explained the origins of the universe, that does not mean that our current paradigms of physics and cosmology will not eventually provide at least a partial explanation.

It’s not even a paradox – a conflict that cannot be resolved by current theories. Even paradoxes do not necessarily invalidate current theories, it could simply mean that they are incomplete. (I don’t want to get into the semantic argument about whether or not “incomplete” = “wrong.” Suffice it to say, that incomplete is a more accurate description.)

His space and time arguments are essentially the same, although physicists are much further along in developing theories of space and time than about what happened “before” the Big Bang and where everything came from.

Quantum Voodoo

The core of Lanza’s argument rests on a misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. This is the most disappointing aspect of a generally disappointing argument, because it has so long been demolished by physicists. Lanza argues that nothing exists without an observer, and actually cites the double-slit experiments for support.

He is making two key mistakes here. The first is the confusion of “observer” with “consciousness” (actually his entire premise rests upon this fallacy). He states that when the physicist is looking light will go through the two slits as particles, making two clumps of light on the other side. If the physicist is not looking, however, the light will pass through as a wave and make an interference pattern.

This is wrong. The results of the experiment depend not at all on the presence or absence of an observer or a consciousness. What matters is whether or not there is a detector in each slit, detecting the presence of the photon as it passes through the slit. In other words, if the photon has to interact with any particle of matter, then the probability wave must collapse and it behaves like a particle. If the photon is not detected, however, then it continues to travel as a wave until it hits the film or photon detector on the other side of the slit, at which point the wave function collapses.

The only thing that matters is whether or not the photons are detected or interacted with in any way prior to or after passing through the slits. This has absolutely nothing to do with consciousness or an observer. This is the common misunderstanding of the quantum gurus.

Lanza’s second mistake is to extrapolate from quantum experiments, in which conditions are very carefully controlled, to macroscopic conditions. He actually makes the analogy to your kitchen, as if your kitchen is not really there unless you are there to observe your kitchen. Nothing in quantum mechanism justifies such a macroscopic extrapolation. Particles interacting with each other collapse all the wave forms and once you get up to something like a kitchen all the quantum weirdness disappears and essentially classical physics predominates (there may be some really subtle effects around the edges, but the kitchen certainly does not disappear).

Lanza has a fundamental misunderstanding of quantum mechanics and the details and implications of experiments like the double-slit experiment. This alone obliterates his entire notion of biocentrism.

Conclusion

It is sad to see a mainstream scientist like Lanza give in to such rank pseudoscience, and then use his credentials to sell that pseudoscience to the public. Take a look again at his website – I don’t like to speculate too much about a person’s psychology or motivations, but I do think we see the telltale signs of an ego a bit out of control.

This is consistent with the act of stepping outside one’s area of genuine expertise and expounding on grandiose theories that explain everything and seek to topple our understanding of reality, even over the heads of the actual experts in the relevant field.

Notice how he places his picture alongside Darwin and Einstein. Meanwhile, biocentrism is not even science.

I also think that his reason why he proposed this idea that he lost a loved one but I can only speculate:

“According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air – if you take everything away, what’s left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You can’t see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.

Death does not exist in a timeless, spaceless world. In the end, even Einstein admitted, “Now Besso” (an old friend) “has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us…know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Immortality doesn’t mean a perpetual existence in time without end, but rather resides outside of time altogether.

This was clear with the death of my sister Christine. After viewing her body at the hospital, I went out to speak with family members. Christine’s husband – Ed – started to sob uncontrollably. For a few moments I felt like I was transcending the provincialism of time. I thought about the 20-watts of energy, and about experiments that show a single particle can pass through two holes at the same time. I could not dismiss the conclusion: Christine was both alive and dead, outside of time. ”

He continues how his sister died and things like that. I think this is why he became obsessed with the idea of biocentrism but its only a speculation.

Also as I side note. Does these believers in pseudoscience have something new to give? I am starting to feel that everything is just repeating itself. Nothing new is coming from them. Its just the same arguments over and over again.

“A new myth is burrowing its way into modern thinking. The notion is spreading that the principles embodied in quantum mechanics imply a central role for the human mind in determining the very nature of the universe. Not surprisingly, this idea can be found in New Age periodicals and in many books on the metaphysical shelves of book stores. But it also can appear where you least expect it, even on the pages of that bastion of rational thinking,The Humanist . In an article in the November/December 1992 issue entitled “The Wise Silence,” Robert Lanza says that, according to the current quantum mechanical view of reality, “We are all the ephemeral forms of a consciousness greater than ourselves.” The myth of quantum consciousness should take its place along with gods, unicorns, and dragons as yet another product of the fantasies of people unwilling to accept what science, reason, and their own eyes tell them about the world.”

“This appears to be a rabbithole that Lanza was going down as early as 1992, in an article entitled “The Wise Silence,” and again in 2007,where he was immediately smacked for his failure to grasp simple (okay, maybe not simple) concepts. Vic Stenger was there in 1992 to smack Lanza’s ideas down, and it may have kept him quiet for 15 years (may not, more digging may be needed). His recent groundbreaking (and sarcasm is dripping here) article that launched this spiral down, down, down, to where Chopra was waiting to meet and embrace him this year at Huff, was published in The American Scholar in 2007.”

I love how he explains that “biocentrism” comes from “Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “center””, as if Greek ‘kentron’ is somehow a more meaningful word than its obvious English derivative ‘centre.’

If only we could invent a “super find and replace” that would go back and replace the word “observation” with “interaction” in everything ever written about Quantum Mechanics….

This has always been one of the “big three” distortions of QM by pseudoscientists:

1. Observer Created Reality (as above)
2. “spooky” action at a distance (allowing for ESP and super-luminal commincation)
3. The “Many Worlds” interpretation (allowing for just about anything you want – Oh, and sorry, physicists who talk about “many worlds” like it has some kind of physical reality)

Lanza has ‘observed’ biocentrism to be ‘true’,ergo,it is now ‘true’ in his mind at least,and that is his ‘reality’.
I have a junk drawer in my kitchen that is clearly a portal to another universe.Things go in never to be seen again.That is my ‘reality’.

“If only we could invent a “super find and replace” that would go back and replace the word “observation” with “interaction” in everything ever written about Quantum Mechanics….”

It simply amazes me that the universe created in the minds of people like Deepak Chopra and Robert Lanza collapses on the simple misunderstanding that when a physicists says “observation” he simply means “the detector in the apparatus is turned on”.

I understand your hesitancy to criticize his ego, but jiminy crickets, someone needs to put a leash on that thing. I think I first read about Lanza through Orac’s blog a few years back (one of Lanza’s Huffington Puff pieces). He was name dropping and resume waving back then too. His HuffPo bio is hilarious as well:

“Dr. Robert Lanza is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has several hundred publications and inventions, and over two dozen scientific books…”

One of the leading scientists in the world?! That is quite the claim. I suppose a large ego is part of the requirement for arbitrarily deciding the entire material world is a fabrication of your mind?

Not to derail the biocentrism angle,but when I first read about the double slit experiment back in the 70’s, it was presented as:
When single photons are emitted one at a time,and both slits are open,they collectively (statistically) will fall on a photo sensitive medium such that an interference pattern will emerge, and when one of the slits is covered up, the same protocol will produce a single bar. The implication seemed to be that the photon ‘knew’ somehow that the conditions were such that it ‘should have’ been interfered with,despite the fact that there were no other photons to physically interfere with it.

Does that sound anything like what ya’ll understand the phenomena to be (minus the ‘knew’ part of course). The reason I ask,is that at the time this really blew my mind,but I didn’t really interpret it as the observer (read person) affecting the outcome,as much as some weird non-intuitive and unknown property of physics at work. But I have seen and heard so many explanations of the experiment since,and each seem to present it in a different way,that I was never really sure that the original scenario was an accurate account of what can actually happen.

I think the simplest interpretation is the wave interferes with itself, and the probability of particle detect is based on the interference of the wave with itself. The Copenhagen interpretation.

This is still the most popular view amongst quantum mechanics (see what I did there), but is not the only view. A correct interpretation must involve describing the equipment, and the measurement device as part of the wave function, but that isn’t something we can solve, or even comprehend meaningfully from our every day experiences.

The bit we can all agree is the results are the same even if no one watches it happen, which destroys the biocentric argument.

Even if we somehow determine a concious observer is needed, and is on earth (of all the planets in the Universe), it might equally have been a dinosaur, or a fish that made the necessary observations to bring the Universe into existence. Biocentric doesn’t necessarily imply a geocentric, or a human-centric world view, that it always does reveals they haven’t excluded bias in their thinking.

“When single photons are emitted one at a time,and both slits are open,they collectively (statistically) will fall on a photo sensitive medium such that an interference pattern will emerge, and when one of the slits is covered up, the same protocol will produce a single bar”

The slits aren’t covered up. They have detectors which can be turned off and on. If they are turned off, even a beam so weak that only one photon at a time passes through the apparatus, will produce an interference pattern – which is wave like behaviour. If the detectors are turned on, a scatter pattern is seen – which is particle like behaviour.

And, yes, the consciousness of the observer has nothing to do with it. When the the physicists says “when we observe what’s happening at the slits”, he simply means that the detectors at the slits are turned on. Nothing more. The physicist could set up his apparatus, put it on time delay, go out and get run over by a train, and the outcome of his experiment will be exactly the same as if he remained in the room watching the pattern unfold.

“The implication seemed to be that the photon ‘knew’ somehow that the conditions were such that it ‘should have’ been interfered with,despite the fact that there were no other photons to physically interfere with it”

One way to think of this is that light travels as a wave but interacts like as a particle.
Light is emitted as particles by the light source and travels as a wave toward the two slits. If the detectors are turned off, there is no interaction and the light continues to travel as a wave through both slits producing an interference pattern. If the detectors are turned on, one or the other will interact with the light wave “collapsing” it into particles which continue on to the screen producing a scatter pattern.

The weird part is that the same will happen even if only one detector is turned on. In this situation, only half the particles are detected, but we still get the same scatter pattern. It looks as if the system reasons that if the particle didn’t go through this slit, it must have gone through the other slit.

The other weird part is that the detector can be placed a considerable distance behind the slits. As before, the scatter pattern will be seen if the detector is turned on, and an interference pattern will be seen if the detector is turned off. This looks like backward-in-time causation.

The point is that this is all totally predictable. Set up the system this way and the result will be this. No observer will ever alter the outcome no matter how carefully he observes the apparatus. No consciousness will ever alter the outcome no matter how well developed it is. They are irrelevant.

When I took college physics, the double slit light demonstration was accompanied by the same experiment with water and a little wave generator projected onto a screen so we could all see it. This was to see the wave interference pattern that happens between the slits and the screen. We also did some calculations concerning the distance to the walls where the light hit from the slits, the distance between the slits, and the distance between the brightest solid bar of light and where it canceled (the sum of the two amplitudes becomes zero, linear addition of the wave functions). You can roughly calculate the wavelength of the light. That was10 years ago, the equations escape me now. Never once got the sense that the light or waves weren’t there if everyone looked away. I feel like if some of these intro physics profs had just gone one step further than “ooo look at the cool effect”. or if these otherwise smart people had paid attention, we wouldn’t have to suffer this nonsense. No one in my physics class interpreted the double slit demo as one photon going through two holes.

The history of quantum woo goes back quite a ways. Other commenters have noted how long Lanza has been thinking along these lines, so I’ve started to look at library catalogs and databases to see how far back this quantum – consciousness connection goes. Lexis/Nexis plots a course back to Fritjof Capra’s 1977 Tao of Physics. I bet if L/N reached farther back, more would turn up.

Sadly, the news media is adding to the confusion. In Lexis/Nexis, the story as picked up by The Independent in Britain has a headline, “Is there an afterlife? The science of biocentrism can prove there is, claims quantum physicist Professor Robert Lanza.” This additional profession for Lanza may have been corrected on their Web site (he was demoted to “professor”), but I suspect it will persist in L/N, and in the memory of casual readers, for years to come.

And what determines or acknowledges that there is a detector detecting the photon as it passes through the slit? Consciousness. What invented the double slit experience and placed the detector there in the first place? Consciousness. What is making the argument, right now, about there being no need for consciousness to detect the photon? Consciousness. What is making the argument that we only need a detector? Consciousness. What observes the result of that detector? Consciousness. It is consciousness that is denying its own power and existence.

How ironic.

We already have the power of mind over matter. However, the moment your consciousness decides that mind over matter does not exist, that innate power of consciousness now empowers matter and you will be “right” in your reality. You relinquish control of your own consciousness.

What Chopra and Lanza have not yet figured out is that there are two aspects of consciousness. Ego, which denies its own existence and is rooted in self interest, and our true consciousness, the will to care and love other unconditionally.

Our skepticism and doubts are implanted by ego. This is for free will purposes. Your argument against this is also ego.

The power of consciousness can be tested. How? Each time we gain the courage and muster the will to let go of our ugly ego, to admit it and then squash it (and it has to be transformative effort where letting go of it is devastatingly painful) then we will experience the result of perceiving a higher truth. That is when we experience the “aha!” moment.

This is something that cannot be taught from one person to another. To teach it is to preach it and preaching only leads to intolerance, conflict and war. Rather, each person must find this truth on their own. Healthy debate about these ideas is positive. Debate laced with anger, resentment, reactive emotions, are the work of ego. An open mind, the ability to see both sides, temporarily, where it hurts — deeply hurts — when we let go of our ego to see the other side, THAT is when we are able to unleash our true consciousness, and perceive these higher truths.

If you disagree now and call this nonsense, you will be “right” in your reality. And we stay imprisoned in this world of chaos, pain, conflict, suffering and death. Because of our ego, we would rather die and be right.

When someone has found this truth, they also acquire the wisdom to allow others the space and dignity to find the truth on their own.

So you believe that consciousness defines reality. And because it does, I am only proving you’re right by defining my own reality, a universe in which consciousness appears not to define reality.

In other words, the universe is as you say, and if it seems otherwise to me that’s only true because the universe is as you say. That’s pretty neat, and must ultimately be very comforting. It doesn’t require thought, or debate, or evidence, or anything at all beyond your own individual personal certainty.

if pribram is correct it seems as though our brains are nothing more than holographic receptors…why would that be the case in a physical world…if u r relying on ur brain for ur rationale this is quite the paradox…what are ur thoughts on such a thing as the amplituhedron…why does burkhard heim levels of reality and nassim haramein holofractalgraphic theory w a sprinkle of black holes fit so well in many models of reality…why does robert monroe say what he says…and why do so many others that do what he did say what he said…when u mix terence mckenna with dmt why do u get such conviction…and why does the resonant brainwave frequency play a part in this cosmic radio station and dmt seem like a remote control u just sat on…why do so many doctors have success working on ppl with what many here would call alternative medicine…what is the history of conventional medicine and the federal reserve for that matter-is there a connection…when u put 1 wolf in a cage with 100 sheep why is it that the wolf is always the last one to walk out of that cage…even though the sheep outnumber him 100 to 1…these are thoughts worth thinking…some may even be valid…

It is important to deeply considered the essence of what billyphillips is asserting. Everything we “know” scientifically or otherwise about the universe has come to us by way of consciousness. Can anyone here suggest a way to ascertain reality that is truly independent of consciousness?

“Neuroscientists commonly assume the human brain exists in the real,
objective space of physics, but all their sensory images and concepts of the brain
appear in the space of consciousness. Moreover, all the sensory images of space
experienced by physicists arise within the external space of their consciousness,
and all their concepts of space emerge within the internal space of consciousness.
Although we may believe in the existence of space independent of consciousness,
all our concepts of such real, objective space arise within the space of
consciousness.
As for the relation between sensory images and their related
objects believed to exist in the objective world independent of consciousness,
neurologist Antonio Damasio acknowledges, “There is no picture of the object
being transferred from the object to the retina and from the retina to the brain.”
To generalize, the appearances to our senses are not replicas, or re-presentations,
of phenomena in objective, physical space. They are fresh creations arising in the
space of consciousness. Likewise, our concepts of space and the objects within it
are not replicas of anything existing independently of the mind. In short, the
brain believed by neuroscientists to exist in real, objective space is as devoid of
consciousness as is the physical space conceived of by physicists.” -Alan Wallace

What billyphillips is missing is that the fact that we, as conscious being, understand anything is a necessary function of consciousness because understanding is part of consciousness.

This is true only in a circular and trivial sense. It does not lend any deeper understanding of reality.

The fact that consciousness is in the loop would be true in a completely materialist universe. This does not, therefore, distinguish a materialist vs consciousness-created universe. It’s therefore not an argument for the latter.

Steven,
The point that billyphillips is making appears to be, on the contrary, exactly that which you claim he is missing. Consciousness is central, pivotal even, not only to understanding, but to our entire experience of reality from the moment we’re born until we die (at the very least). Therefore, an integrated scientific paradigm that is truly empirical must have consciousness as a central component rather than peripheral epiphenomena. All models of reality must, by nature, have their roots in consciousness itself.

Biocentrism and ideas like it are attempting (with more or less success) to re-frame the debate in more honest terms. We cannot know reality from any other perspective except from our human, biological one. To claim otherwise is delusion. Or perhaps the scientific materialists are still trying to see reality from the mind of god as Newton and their other patriarchs were attempting to do?

Assertions that claim priority of any theoretical constructions over first person experience require varying degrees of faith in claims of men, most of whom I’ve never met. I can conceive of a reality where space, matter, and time are epiphenomenal constructs or illusions (ie. as in a dream or in the conception of reality as a computer simulation). But, it strikes me as fundamentally impossible to conceive of a reality devoid of consciousness because the very act of conceiving would necessitate it. It seems obvious that consciousness is most fundamental to human reality. Without it, there is just a sea of information with infinite potentials yet to be manifest.

Ultimately, our lives and all our experiences are conditioned and constrained by our level of consciousness. Therefore, to probe consciousness directly should lend us, in fact, the deepest understanding of reality. -The Radical Skeptic

Coincidentally, while this blog post was being penned, the latest University of Virginia alumni magazine was in print production, featuring the cover story “A Window Into The Unknown – U. Va. scientist explores children’s memories of past lives.” The justification is a branch of Lanza’s arguments about quantum mechanics and consciousness.

One’s truth is as good as anyone’s else. No one, even if he/she may be the most scholarly or well informed or most intelligent being that ever lived or is alive today, holds an absolute truth. Our brain capacity to information and everything in between will always be limited and so with our knowledge and understanding. Time and space are infinite and are mere illusions of our minds that does’nt really exist. Our consciousness made us aware we are here, yet no one really knows what and where consciousness comes from. So, everything is debatable. The ENIGMA of life. Tickle your brain and laugh at your follies. The more we learn the less we know. Live happy. Live for the benefit of humanity…while we are CONSCIOUS and AWARE!

I was 17-18, when i said that the mainstream “scientists” are missing the main component in all of their calculations and research, and that main component is – consciousness. I was never into physics or chemistry, but i could listen to my buddy reading the official laws and rules in those areas, that are taught in schools, and i could tell right away if they are right or wrong, and explain why are they wrong. The thing is, we are not all on the same level of evolution/spiritual maturity/consciousness. One can not understand something, on the other hand, this same thing comes naturally to someone else.
If you ask me, i can’t even believe that there is actually a discussion over this…as this is the most basic natural law in Universe 🙂